About LP
LP is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter whose real name is Laura Pergolizzi. They were born on 18 March 1981 in Huntington Station, Long Island: a Neapolitan mother, a father of Sicilian and Irish blood, a grandfather from Palermo. Childhood heroes were Roy Orbison, Leonard Cohen, Freddie Mercury. At sixteen their mother died; later LP would write “Forever for Now” in her memory. Their father long treated their orientation as a teenage phase. After Walt Whitman High School they moved to New York City and took the initials LP — shorter than a passport, longer than a stage. David Lowery of Cracker heard them in a club, put them on backing vocals, and produced the debut Heart-Shaped Scar (2001). The second album, Suburban Sprawl & Alcohol (2004), was made with Linda Perry: kind reviews, empty rooms, bar shifts, and the sense that the industry did not know where to put a “rocker with a pop voice.”
SXSW 2006 started a label bidding war: L.A. Reid signed them to Island Def Jam — and the deal cracked over “artistic differences.” LP went off to write other people’s hits: “Cheers (Drink to That)” for Rihanna, “Beautiful People” for Christina Aguilera, songs for the Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, Cher, Mylène Farmer. In 2010 they moved to Los Angeles. “Into the Wild” landed in a Citibank ad; LP became Martin Guitar’s first female ambassador; Vogue named them Artist of the Week. Forever for Now (2014), produced by Rob Cavallo, wore Warner pop gloss that still did not match who they were onstage: ukulele, harmonica, that whistle, a short cut, and a voice that breaks a room without a choir.
The real blast was “Lost on You” (2015): a breakup with actress Tamzin Brown, folk-rock with a chorus that crawled across Europe on its own, No. 1 in eighteen countries, diamond in France and Mexico. The video and the life crossed with singer Lauren Ruth Ward. Beside it: “Other People,” “Muddy Waters” (the Orange Is the New Black finale), the Death Valley EP, the album Lost on You. Then Heart to Mouth (“Girls Go Wild,” “Recovery”), a duet with Mylène Farmer, “N’oublie pas,” Churches (2021), Love Lines (2023) — a record after the split from Mexican actress Julieta Grajales, about “several love storylines at once.” In 2026 came the single “Shelly” and the album Room 12, plus the All Is Not Lost tour for the hit’s tenth year. LP’s live trick is not gloss but whistle and throat: the part you cannot hand to another star as a cover.
LP never hid behind a straight mask: “visibility matters; we are normal people.” Since 2023 they have been with Czech model Iveta Maurerová. In 2021 they shifted toward they/them, saying it fit the vibe, while remaining “equally comfortable” as a “garden-variety lesbian.” In 2024 they appeared in a hoodie with Russian symbols — “a gift from fans” — and lost a Kaunas show: the cost of visibility, this time political. LP is memorable not as a “new star,” which they never were, but as a writer who spent a decade giving songs to Rihanna until they finally sang about losing someone — and a continent sang along.
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